Call tracking ought to be a part of your marketing strategy, as it has the potential to help your business track incoming and outgoing phone calls back to specific marketing campaigns. Often, it is the missing metric in your measurement tools that helps you track the effectiveness of communication campaigns on mass media and online channels.

Despite us operating in the digital era, we must not underestimate the power of a phone call—especially one that a prospect makes to our business. It is often easier for a customer to pick up the phone and speak to a representative of your organization rather than spend time reading information on or offline. According to a study done by BIA/Kelsey, mobile search is expected to generate 192 billion calls to businesses by 2019. And, keep in mind, such a phone call can be the opportunity to learn about the customer, get feedback about your business, close a sale and/or upsell. A phone call is the next best thing to one-on-one facetime with a customer.

1. You can see which ad campaign brought in the best results

Designing and executing an advertising campaign is not cheap. Besides, there is significant risk involved as you are will never be 100% sure what will work. Call tracking technology allows you to assign different numbers for all your advertising campaigns, thus allowing you to track which campaign generated the most number of calls. A form of A/B testing, the knowledge you gain will help you make strategic decisions on which messaging and creatives to run to maximize success, aka conversions. By halting campaigns that do not produce adequate results, you can save money that can be used to back the winning campaigns, thus boosting conversions.

2. You can determine the medium that works best for your marketing messaging

With the convergence of mass media and online marketing channels, most of your marketing campaigns will depend on a variety of channels to reach your target audience. And every channel costs money. By assigning separate phone numbers to each channel, you can directly track which channel yields the best results.

With such rich information, you can focus your resources on the channel that converts the best for your business, and you will have evidence of which channels are the best to reach your target audience for future campaigns.

For example, if you are utilizing a range of channels such as television, radio, print, and online media, and the results state that most calls were generated via your online efforts, you can make the decision to halt all other channels and focus your efforts on online channels. This will maximize your reach, engagement, and thereby, conversions.

Research by Smart Insights reveals that 48% of searches on consumers’ mobile devices start with Google search. As a result, tying in inbound calls to your search advertising will play a crucial role in your marketing strategy.

3. Recorded phone calls help you understand your customer better

While you may have a general idea of your customers needs, personality, and behaviour, listening to recorded conversations between your customers and sales team helps you go deeper into the customer’s psyche. You will gain a better understanding of their pain points, what aspects they inquire about, what is keeping them from making a purchase (or what made them jump at your offer) and much more.

This information can prove valuable in every aspect of your marketing strategy, and ties into how you market to your audience based on their buyer persona.

OrecX reports 69% of companies that record calls do so to quality levels and to assess their staff.

4. Call tracking technology can provide a wealth of information about your customers

State of the art call tracking platforms make you privy to a treasure trove of information such as where most calls come from, days and times when most calls were generated, which devices are being used to make calls, referring URL (in the event the call was generated by clicking on your website or a display banner), and keywords relating to the call. This information can help you fine-tune your sales funnel, thus improving conversions by being able to focus your resources on what works, and eliminating what doesn’t.

Google reports that almost 70% mobile searchers call a business directly from search results. Imagine the amount of information you can collect from such customer calls, and also the decisions you can make on where your advertising budget needs to go based on the insights!

Conclusion

While you will have plenty of data at hand in the form of email inquiries and online conversions, call tracking definitely has its merits. In many cases, most conversions take place via phone calls, and call tracking offers the best metrics to ascertain many aspects of your marketing initiatives, including advertising campaigns, customer service efforts and complaint handling.

What are your experiences with call tracking? How has it helped you in your conversion strategies?

About The Author

John is a long-time professional with over two decades of experience in analytics and communications technology. He works as the Senior Data Analyst at Fone Dynamics, a leader in call tracking, voice, and SMS communication. When John steps out of the office, he loves to spend time with his family and go bike riding.